Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

'Thirty shillings per ton a month, we finding everything, or fifteen shillings per ton a month and you finding everything.'

I put down the figures, and said, 'How long is it going to take the brig to arrive off the island?'

He talked a little to himself, blinking and grimacing absurdly, and replied, 'Call it a month.'

'I should like to see the brig, Captain Cliffe.'

'At once, if you will, sir.'

I sent for a cab and we drove to the waterside. He talked freely when he was out of the house and driving. I found something very honest and diverting in this little man's looks and manner of speech. He had an amazingly brisk and nimble mind, I thought; I got at that in a very little while. He went behind my questions, fetched a number of new possibilities for hope to feed on out of the scheme of the search, and heartened me vastly by his clear view and statement of my wishes and plans—that is, he said that the hull sighted by the whaler was beyond all question the wreck of the 'Lady Emma'; everything tallied—colour of sides, situation, time, down to the very stump of foremast. Then, since three were abandoned in her, why shouldn't they still be aboard? Of course it was my duty, he said, to sail right away. Who wouldn't, to deliver his young lady out of such a scene of horror? But humanity was in it too. The hull was to be searched for and overhauled, and I was quite right in reckoning that if I left that job to the British Admiral the hulk would have disappeared, or the people inside have perished into statues of ice, before the official mind had settled what to do.

'Not unlikely,' said he as we drove along, 'the parties have been taken out; sealers and whalers are constantly moving about those waters; but we aren't to think of that. If they're gone, so much the better, for then they're safe elsewhere; but it's your business to consider that they're still there and to fetch 'em.'

Thus we talked, and as we rowed to the brig we continued to chat, he entering very fully into the cost and character of the equipment we should require, the time we should occupy, supposing them alive in the hull, whether we returned with them to the Cape or headed for the nearest South American port.